This event is part of our 39th season of Portland Arts & Lectures. A series subscription must be purchased to attend this event.

For more information on the season, please see our FAQs or reach out to us at la@literary-arts.org.

Mary Beard is a classicist and the author of many books on the ancient world, including SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the forthcoming Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World. Well-known for her television work, she has presented programs including Meet the Romans with Mary Beard and Civilisations. She was a professor of classics at Newnham College, University of Cambridge before retiring in 2022. She lives in England.

Praise:

For SPQR:

“Beard’s enthusiasm for her subject is infectious and is well-reflected in her clever, thoroughly enjoyable style of writing. Lovers of Roman history will revel in this work, and new students will quickly become devotees.” –Kirkus Reviews

“By the time Beard has finished, she has explored not only archaic, republican, and imperial Rome, but the eastern and western provinces over which it eventually won control . . . She moves with ease and mastery though archaeology, numismatics, and philology, as well as a mass of written documents on stone and papyrus.” –New York Review of Books

For Women & Power:

“Beard is our most famous classicist, with a gift for bringing ancient Greece and Rome alive on the page like no one else. She is a writer of exceptional erudition and biting wit, and reading her is always a pleasure.” –The Guardian